Masochist me? An Ars writer’s iPad-only workday

How easy is it to complete a full workday while only using the iPad? One …

According to Steve Jobs, we've already entered the post-PC world thanks to the iPad, the iPhone, and other non-computer computing devices. But have we? Sure, musicians and artists might get by doing their work on these newfangled devices, but what about those of us who lack the talent to doodle New Yorker covers for a living, forcing us to perform more "normal" jobs?

When I reviewed the original iPad in the spring of 2010, I wrote part of the review on the iPad itself. At that time, however, apps for the iPad were few; developers didn't yet have a full grasp of what it meant to develop software for such a large non-laptop device. I wrote the section of the review in the iPad's default Notes app—text only, of course—and did the formatting work, the images, and the content management system (CMS) wrangling on a traditional computer, as any sane person would. But both native and Web apps have come quite a long way over the last 17 months, causing us to wonder: is it now truly possible to do a full day's worth of work for Ars using nothing but an iPad?

The initial proposition seemed crazy. I was sure it was not possible to work this way. My job as a writer and editor here at Ars depends on (too much) serious multitasking with multiple open windows. I wasn't sure I'd even be able to successfully write full articles with proper formatting, links, images, and HTML using only iPad apps. And let's not even talk about the Ars CMS—many of us at Ars have attempted to use it from our iPhones in the past; it has always ended in tears.

So imagine my surprise when a day on the iPad actually worked.

My tools

My job changes on an hourly basis, and can only be described as "managed chaos." I typically use either a 27" iMac or an 11" MacBook Air, depending on what I'm doing or where I need to be. My essential software tools include a fully functional Web browser, an IM client for communicating with writers and other editors, some way to access IRC (the "office" part of our virtual office lives), an e-mail client, a Twitter client, an RSS reader, and a simple writing app that can export clean HTML.

As those of you with iPads already know, Safari works well for Web browsing; Mail, despite its various annoyances, is okay for getting the e-mail job done. I had extremely poor experiences in the past dealing with the official AIM app for iPad, so on high recommendation from Twitter, I purchased the $9.99 Beejive IM client for iPad. A Web-based IRC solution already existed for me thanks to Ars developer Lee "Quick Draw" Aylward, whose Alice client is so useful to those who switch devices regularly that it has become my main IRC client on my "real" computers, too. (The benefit here over another client—even Web-based ones—is that Alice keeps you connected even while you're not on the page, so you can easily load it up to see what's been going on while you were away doing other things.) Twitter was easy—I just used the official Twitter client for iPad—and I decided to forego RSS, because who really wants to sift through thousands of RSS items every hour of the day on any device?

The biggest challenge was finding a writing app to suit my—and the CMS's—tastes. On recommendation from former Ars writer David Chartier, I decided to try out the $4.99 Writing Kit, which boasts Markdown support and clean HTML exports to my iPad clipboard or e-mail. Shockingly, these features are already hard enough to find in a normal Mac app (I use MacJournal for this purpose under OS X), so I was pleased to find something that at least seemed to offer what I wanted on the iPad.

My rule was that I couldn't touch a real computer all day, though I did use a wireless hardware keyboard with the iPad via Bluetooth. I figured if Apple allows it without jailbreaking, I could allow it too. I usually have no problem typing on the iPad's onscreen keyboard for short items, but if I was going to work all day on the thing, I needed the screen space and typing speed that a hardware keyboard would offer.